


Tidally Locked

by Enterprisingly



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Cognitive Dissonance, Dark Side Rey, Drama, F/M, Flirting but with Lightsabers, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force-Sensitive Finn, Hurt/Comfort, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Jedi Ben Solo, Knight of Ren Rey, NOT a retelling of the movies, Non-Linear Narrative, Role Reversal, Romance, a love story on a galactic scale
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 03:06:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13309116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enterprisingly/pseuds/Enterprisingly
Summary: They are tidally locked, the two of them. Eternally orbiting each other and never looking away. She is his dark mirror, and if he can hold onto his own light, it might just be the thing that saves them both.In a world where Snoke got his hands on Rey when she was a child and Ben's family managed not to drive him to the Dark side, two lost souls find each other amongst the stars.





	Tidally Locked

**Author's Note:**

> I'm doing it guys. I've seriously wanted to write something for these two since The Force Awakens came out but I really couldn't get my thoughts together enough to do so. I stumbled across a bunch of role-swap art on tumblr the other day though that just got me going, so here we go.
> 
> Some Notes:  
> 1\. This currently has 3 chapters. I may up the count as need be but my guess is that this will end up being around 10-12k words and 3-4 chapters long.  
> 2\. This is NOT a retelling of the movies. This is a true 'what if' fic that takes into account a lot of changes that would have occurred had Snoke never gotten his claws into Ben and had Rey not been on Jakku to get the plot of TFA rolling.  
> 3\. There's gonna be a bunch of OCs in very minor roles in this just by the nature of this story. I'm not pulling them from the EU as it stands butttttttt... I am always open to suggestions of characters who might be an interesting fit so please feel free to send them to me!  
> 4\. The rating may go up.  
> 5\. This is unbeta'd. I could desperately use a beta. Hit me up on [my tumblr](http://commandercait.tumblr.com) if you're interested!  
> 6.I will post chapters as I finish them. Comments and Kudos greatly inspire me and encourage me to write faster. You know what to do!

Their eyes meet across the battlefield, and through all the blood and grit and grime, hers are still blazing like stars in her furious face. He squares his body, raising his saber to the Niman opening stance. She spins her saber staff in a languid, almost lazy figure eight around her wrist before settling into her own opening stance. As usual, it's the aggressive and dangerous Juyo, he notes wryly. Time vanishes for a moment and he sees her as he first did, a year before, when she they first squared off and she hadn't even known what her fighting style was called.

There’s a battle raging all around them, soldiers in different uniforms clash into one another, but the area between them remains open and empty, as though even in their most desperate and frenzied moments, the soldiers know not to get between the glowing blades of the two titans about to do battle.

Her lips quirk up and he can’t tell if it’s a smile or a snarl before she’s racing towards him, a beautiful and deadly blur of black robes and red light. As he reaches for the space where there is nothing but the force, there is a split second where thinks of the unfairness of it all and he wonders: is this how it was always meant to be? In another life, could things have been different? Or were they always going to wind up here, Ben Solo and Kira Ren, locked together in a whirl of light and violence, while destiny sings in their veins and the unsettled Force howls around them.

But that is not a very Jedi way of looking at things, so he shoves the thought aside and his brain descends into the trance of combat.

-

She is six when the men in black robes come. There are four of them, and six figures in strange, white armor that makes Rey think of the skeletons she sometimes finds amongst the dunes, when a particularly strong sand storm blows through and shifts the terrain around.

The adults kick her out of the derelict light freighter they call home and tell her to go clean some of the scrap salvage they hauled in earlier. But Rey, who was raised by the desert – her parents, who can’t seem to decide if they want her alive or dead, are hardly worth mentioning – is more wild creature than human, has never been very good at listening to instructions, so instead she runs back around the dune that has mostly swallowed the ship and clambers up to the top, sliding through a hole in the top of the hull and into one of the many secret spaces she has discovered. Crevices, between mechanical and electronic systems, too large for a full grown adult but perfect for an underfed child.

If she’s very careful, she can slip silently into the rusted out remnants of the ventilation shafts and drop down to sit just above the stripped out engine room that functions as her family’s living quarters.

Her mother and father sit against one wall, the men sit in a semi-circle against the other. Their accents are foreign to her ears, clipped and neat in a way that no one in this end of the galaxy speaks, and there’s a strange hum in the air that makes it difficult for Rey to understand what they’re saying. Her parents are shaking their heads though, and her father is gesticulating wildly as he always does when he’s haggling hard. The man at the front, who has thinning white hair, gestures to one of the others who withdraws a pouch from within the depths of his robes and begins stacking metal bars on the ground. They glitter warmly in the light of the room. Her parents look at each other. Her father licks his lips nervously.

Rey strains harder, willing herself to push through it and just _understand_ –

Something blooms within her, like water welling out of a punctured canteen, like light spilling out between cracks in the hull of a starship, like blood from a wound.

 _Danger, danger,_ something inside of her screams, _welcome home,_ something else sighs.

She can hear the men now, yes – _give us the girl and we will give you everything you need to leave this place for good,_ they are saying – but she can hear _everything_ else too. The way their hearts beat, the whispering voice of the desert at night, cruel and serene all at once, the song of the stars high above.

Rey breathes and a hundred- thousand- _billion_ lifeforms breathe with her. There is peace. There is violence. She claps her hands to her ears, trying to shut it all out, make it all stop but it goes on and on, endless as the universe.

She _screams_.

Every object in the room below that is not bolted down lifts off the ground and spins wildly around like a tornado. The metal plating of the ventilation shaft rips apart like fabric, splitting at the seams and she plummets through the maelstrom, towards the ground.

Then, as abruptly as it started, everything stops and there is stillness once more. The detritus of her family’s home litters the floor, little bars of gold scattered all about like grains of sand. She lays on the floor, dazed and confused with ringing ears and a feeling like an electric current running across her skin. There is frozen silence from the adults for only a fraction of a second before a new kind of chaos fills her world.

Rey reaches out towards her mother, wanting familiar hands, wanting comfort, wanting _anything_ to anchor herself – and her mother is shoving her away, into new hands that clamp like vices around her arms.

“You have a deal! Take her, take her!” Her father is saying, “The girl for the money! Just take her and go!”

“Come, girl,” says the man who is holding her, and his voice sounds the way the sharp-toothed desert jackals look after they’re done feasting on a long-dead carcass, “Our master is going to be very pleased indeed. He did not expect you to awaken so soon.”

The words slur, the world blurs.

Rey – _no, that’s not quite right, is it?_ Whispers the voice in her head – Kira Ren kneels at the feet of her master, head still bowed as she comes back to herself, the vision fading like a dream.

Rage and resentment bubble low in her belly.

“And what have you taken from that vision this time, my young apprentice?” Her master asks, and Rey looks up, letting her anger wrap around her like a protective shield. He sits upon his throne, gazing down upon her with eyes like the black of space made solid.

“Fear and power. You cannot have one without the other. Either you are powerful and others fear you, or you are afraid of the power others wield,” She says.

Lord Snoke’s face stretches into a wide grin, “And are _you_ afraid, my child?”

“Never,” Kira says, “for by the grace of your training, I am powerful.”

-

Ben Solo frequently feels like perhaps he was not cut out to be a Jedi Knight. As though at any point in his life he could have just... slipped, fallen and wound up on another path and it is only by the will of the Force that he has ended up here. His uncle tells him time and time again that there is no emotion, there is only peace. That his heart should be calm as the deep, still lake beyond the Jedi temple. It is not. Ben Solo’s heart turns like a storm.

He’s been training here since he was in his late teens and not a day goes by that he doesn’t wonder if all of this hadn’t started too late. Maybe he would have been better served had his family all been able to agree about what to do with him – how to “handle” him – but alas; for all their skill at overthrowing tyrannical regimes, neither Luke Skywalker, nor Leia Organa (and most certainly _not_ Han Solo) had any idea what to do with him.

He knows that the poisonous blood of Darth Vader flows through his veins. The siren song of the Darkness will always call his name and if he lets it in, even once… it could spell disaster. And despite all that, he knows that they are just afraid _for_ him, not _of_ him.

It helps a little. Not a lot, but a little. Lightsaber drills and burying himself in study help more. At least then he doesn’t have to think too hard about all of it.

He’s sitting in the Holocron library, transcribing the contents of one that he’s meditated with maybe a thousand times, when one of the apprentices, a tousle headed boy from the western reaches named Enyo, bursts through, face flushed red with exertion, panting and panicked.

“Master Solo! It’s– emergency– Master Skywalker!” Enyo stammers, bracing his hands on his knees as he bends over and heaves in air with great, gasping breaths.

Ben sets the Holocron aside and turns to look properly at the boy.

“Breathe, Enyo; a Jedi doesn’t panic and neither should an apprentice,” he says, even though the small voice in the back of his head – the one that sounds _suspiciously_ like his uncle – whispers, _hypocrite_.

He swats it away as he gets to his feet. This is no time for a personal crisis. A Jedi’s first duty is to those who need him.

“What’s wrong?” He asks.

Enyo nods, forcing himself to calm down and regain control of his breathing once more, and speaks.

Ten hours later they are standing on a desolate desert planet, looking at the burnt-out remains of a village. The air is hazy with smoke, and sand, and a feeling of _wrongness_ that makes all the hair stand up on the back of Ben’s neck. Part of him wants to turn tail and run back to the ship right now. Part of him wants to reach out and understand.

Black scars of blaster fire pockmark the earth and bodies lie strewn about the ground like discarded toys. One figure though, makes his heart stop as his breath catches in his chest.

An old man, one who Ben knows well, lays crumpled in the center of the chaos. His torso is bisected by a scorched gash. There’s only one thing in all the galaxy that leaves a mark like that. A Jedi could never mistake that for anything else. Unconsciously, Ben’s hand drops to the lightsaber, hanging from his belt.

He tries to speak, to call for his uncle, but his throat is dry and no sound escapes. He chooses to blame the air, even though he knows that’s not strictly true.

Ben swallows and tries again.

“Master. Look,” he calls, pointing to the fallen body. Luke, who had stooped down to examine something on the sandy ground, turns to follow Ben’s finger and his face – for but a flicker of a second, so fast that it might simply have been a trick of the early dawn light – crumples with grief. Then it’s gone and Ben is once more looking at the unshakeable visage of Jedi Master Luke Skywalker.

“Lor San Teka,” Luke confirms, “He’s the reason we’re here. He sent word and I had hoped…”

He shakes his head. Ben understands. This backwater planet, a speck of nothing in the Western Reaches called Jakku, is a long way from their Jedi Temple. Even at lightspeed they could not truly have hoped to make the journey in time to stop whatever had transpired here.

“That’s a lightsaber wound, isn’t it?” Ben says, frowning, “I was under the impression that we were the only ones using lightsabers these days.”

Luke’s mouth stretches into a grim line.

“We should be. And yet it seems that we are not. There is a ripple in the Force here. Something I have not felt in a very long time. Can you feel it?” He asks, closing his eyes.

Ben mirrors his uncle’s actions, letting his eyes drift shut and reaching out with his mind. Darkness coils lazily around them, a slow, winding river, a serpent in the shadows, the Light fights valiantly to break through but it is so tangled up that it has no hope of doing so.

Keeping his breathing steady, matching the rhythm his master taught him as an apprentice, Ben imagines that in one hand he holds a ball of Light, like a lantern, like an anchor, and _ever so carefully_ he reaches out towards the darkness, willing it to part so he can see what has caused the Force to tangle and scar like this –

It strikes like a snake and he is pulled under.

_Lor San Teka – guardian of knowledge, advisor to Luke and distributor of interesting souvenirs from far off world to the apprentices – hands a datastick to Poe Dameron – old friend, ace pilot, part of his mother’s Resistance._

_“Get this to Luke. Do not let it fall into the wrong hands–”_

_An explosion. The village burns._ _The world shifts._

_Poe is flying away, X-Wing limping, badly injured, but still too fast to be brought down by canonfire–_

_A black command shuttle – Upsillon class, new, deadly – a figure in black disembarks amongst clouds of white fog._ _A blaster bolt shrieks towards her – she freezes it in place with a wave of her hand before swatting it to the side–_

_She stands like a pillar of living darkness in robes of billowing silk above Lor San Teka, who kneels in the custody of her Troopers._

_“Where is the map?” Her voice is a mechanical rumble through the mask._

_“Far out of your grasp, Kira Ren,” Lor San Teka says and she kneels, not a gesture of deference but a threat._

_“Do not fight me, you cannot win. We are trying to save you; I will make this galaxy a better place.”_

_He looks her square in the face, “You and your knights. You and your master. Your ‘First Order’. You will burn this galaxy to the ground.”_

_She recoils with a snarl._

_“Last chance.”_

_“I would rather die.”_

_A red saberstaff, crackling like an unstable star bursts into life and she cuts him down._ _He falls._

_“What shall we do with the villagers?” asks a Trooper in brilliant chromium armor–_

_“Are there any children here?”_

_“No.”_

_“Then kill them all.”_

_The order is repeated._ _Blaster fire turns the darkness fire-bright._

_Ben flinches involuntarily and… everything freezes–_

_Kira Ren’s head turns and through the obsidian visor of her mask he can feel her eyes on him, across time and space, through the force he can feel her looking at him._

_Who are you?_ She asks and the voice in his head is _warry and sad_ , so unlike the growl of the mask.

 _These people did_ nothing _to you. Why did you kill them?_ He asks, instead of answering.

She’s about to speak, about to say _something_ – and Master Luke is shaking him.

“Ben! Ben, snap out of it!”

Ben staggers as the world comes back to him.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” He says, shaking his head to clear the last remaining cobwebs.

Luke grunts, looking over him with an unreadable expression.

“What did you see?” He asks.

Ben tells him everything, except for the part where Kira had looked at him. There is something about that interaction that he is not prepared to share with his Master.

Luke nods and looks away, “It is as I feared. I think I have always known this day would come.”

Ben frowns at his uncle, “What do you mean?”

Luke shakes his head, “I am afraid, Ben, that there is one universal truth we may never escape: where there is light, there will always be shadow.”

-

They were looking for the first Jedi temple, the place where all the secrets and weaknesses of their enemies would be laid bare to them. They had been searching for years and had come so close. The map was within their grasp, in the hands of an defenseless old man,

And it had slipped through her fingers like so much sand.

She had failed.

And she suffers for it.

It is while she is floating high above the polished black durasteel floor of her Master’s hologram projection chamber, feeling electric pain slicing through each and every one of her nerves, that she sees the man. At first, she thinks he’s a hallucination brought on by the pain, but the longer she stares at him, the more solid and real he becomes.

There is something about him, his dark hair and eyes like a midnight sky, that feels strangely familiar. He seems like someone that she has seen before in a dream, far off and faded about the edges but comforting.

For a second she is back in the village on Jakku, giving the order for the execution of the villagers.

 _Who are you?_ She asks.

He’s watching her with accusing eyes and she feels uncomfortably _seen_ , despite all her layers and her mask.

 _These people did_ nothing _to you. Why did you kill them?_ He responds instead of answering.

Strangely, she feels a sort of sick shame that he is seeing her like this. He doesn’t belong in this scene and it makes her feel like perhaps she might not either. Something that might be guilt flashes through her. She crushes it down with a swift strike. These are dangerous thoughts. Kira Ren does not feel guilt. She does _not_ second guess herself.

These people disobeyed the First Order. There is only one acceptable response to that.

If she had left them alive Snoke would have taken it as a sign of weakness and she would have been forced to torture them, one by one, until he broke her of that weakness.

This is better for everyone.

Isn’t it?

Kira opens her mouth to say as much, but the man is gone and she is in the throne room once more. Her head hurts. Her body hurts more. She is laying on the floor, the heavy copper flavor in her mouth suggests she bit her lip when her master let her fall.

Snoke is laughing, a low, raspy sound that makes her grit her teeth.

“Well now,” he says, “Can it be? However did you come to have _Ben Solo_ parading around your pretty little head?”

She struggles to her knees, the layers of silk wrapped about her body sliding against the smooth floor, make it difficult and she is keenly aware of how inelegant she looks in that moment.

“I don’t know, master,” she says, more petulantly than she would like, “He just… appeared in the vision. He wasn’t at the village that night.”

Snoke waves his hand at her, as if batting away her explanations.

“That much is _obvious_ , my apprentice. But what I would like to know is how you managed to catch a glimpse of someone that I have _long_ tried to reach, to no avail,” Snoke leans forwards, bracing his elbows on his knees and steepling his fingers, “Do you have any idea who that is?”

She shakes her head mutely.

Her master smiles.

“That boy, my beautiful, foolish child, is Ben Solo – nephew and apprentice of none other than Luke Skywalker himself.” Snoke spits the name out like a curse.

Skywalker is a name that she knows well; her master’s greatest adversary, leader of the Jedi; a band of religious fanatics bent on sewing chaos and destruction everywhere the First Order seeks to put down the roots of a more civilized world. The Supreme Leader has told her plenty about all of these things.

She has no knowledge of his nephew, however. They have never met, they are strangers. Until now and... he did not feel like a fanatic to her. He felt lost.

Snoke leans back into his throne, settling his twisted frame more comfortably in the massive chair.

“I have figured out how you will make up for your apalling failure, Kira Ren. You will find Ben Solo and you will bring him to me.”

She bows her head even as something small balks at this idea. She knows what sort of hospitality Ben Solo will find here and for all that his uncle has done wrong, surely he has not done anything to deserve such a fate. He cannot help who his family is, after all. No one can.

“Fail me again and I will not be so… generous,” He intones, hologram wavering.

“Of course my master,” She says, and the projection fades, leaving her alone in the darkness of the room.

She takes a deep, steadying breath and gets to her feet. There is a trickle of blood running down her chin from her split lip. She lifts her mask, just enough to wipe at it angrily, but does little more than smear it further across her face, as she stalks out of the room.

Her knights are scattered about the Finalizer and it’s not worth the trouble of potentially running into Hux to go find them in person, so she reaches out with the Force, summoning them to her.

They have a mission to plan.

-

The upper blade of her saber staff whirls down to clash against his and then just as quickly, the lower blade is swinging up towards his side. He moves with her momentum, feet sliding on the muddy ground, and he notes in a distant, distracted way that this feels less like a fight and more like a dance. He knows all her steps and she knows his. They’ve done this before and they’re only doing it now because they don’t know what _else_ to do. Their blades  _scream_ against each other until they spring apart. The Force roils around them, like an ocean churning against a rocky shore.

Ben ducks another vicious slash and uses her over-extension to get a solid Force push in. The impact sends her skidding back and she snarls at him. There’s a cut above her left eyebrow and a bruise high on her cheekbone. Shadows settle beneath her eyes. She looks terrible. She looks _miserable_.

This was all so much easier before she stopped wearing the mask.


End file.
